How do judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 1957 / Served to 1975

James S. Coleman

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

James S. Coleman was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1906–1987
Tenure: 1957–1975 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

United States Naval Academy
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Coleman authored 569 published opinions for the court (1897–1978), plus 51 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: Horsley v. Horsley (349 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 390 of these were attributed to Coleman by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1973	Horsley v. Horsley· Concurrence†	280 So. 2d 155	349
1965	Duncan v. State· Concurrence†	176 So. 2d 840	230
1957	Liberty National Life Insurance Company v. Weldon· Dissent†	100 So. 2d 696	112
1962	Knight v. State	142 So. 2d 899	88
1968	Hubbard v. State· Separate†	215 So. 2d 261	73
1967	Cox v. State	193 So. 2d 759	69
1969	Tiger Motor Co. v. McMurtry· Dissent†	224 So. 2d 638	67
1972	Nunn v. Keith· Dissent†	268 So. 2d 792	66
1967	Wallace v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF MONTGOMERY CTY.	197 So. 2d 428	64
1974	Twyman v. State	300 So. 2d 124	62
1966	Butler v. Olshan	191 So. 2d 7	60
1966	Clenney v. State	198 So. 2d 293	59
1967	Womack v. State	205 So. 2d 579	58
1962	Alabama Power Company v. Smith	142 So. 2d 228	58
1971	Cochran v. Keeton· Dissent†	252 So. 2d 313	57

Showing the 15 most-cited of 648 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James S. Coleman on?: James S. Coleman was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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18 years on the Supreme Court of Alabama. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).